Guilt By Association

[CptSternn]

Well, if your reading this here, and are associating with persons like me in political forums like this, yer all now just as screwed as me...

F.B.I. Data Mining Reached Beyond Initial Targets

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/wa...nflQ4/TsJtaXGQ

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8 — The F.B.I. cast a much wider net in its terrorism investigations than it has previously acknowledged by relying on telecommunications companies to analyze phone-call patterns of the associates of Americans who had come under suspicion, according to newly obtained bureau records.

The documents indicate that the Federal Bureau of Investigation used secret demands for records to obtain data not only on individuals it saw as targets but also details on their “community of interest” — the network of people that the target was in contact with. The bureau stopped the practice early this year in part because of broader questions raised about its aggressive use of the records demands, which are known as national security letters, officials said.

The community of interest data sought by the F.B.I. is central to a data-mining technique intelligence officials call link analysis. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, American counterterrorism officials have turned more frequently to the technique, using communications patterns and other data to identify suspects who may not have any other known links to extremists.

The concept has strong government proponents who see it as a vital tool in predicting and preventing attacks, and it is also thought to have helped the National Security Agency identify targets for its domestic eavesdropping program. But privacy advocates, civil rights leaders and even some counterterrorism officials warn that link analysis can be misused to establish tenuous links to people who have no real connection to terrorism but may be drawn into an investigation nonetheless.

Typically, community of interest data might include an analysis of which people the targets called most frequently, how long they generally talked and at what times of day, sudden fluctuations in activity, geographic regions that were called, and other data, law enforcement and industry officials said.

The F.B.I. declined to say exactly what data had been turned over. It was limited to people and phone numbers “once removed” from the actual target of the national security letters, said a government official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of a continuing review by the Justice Department.

The bureau had declined to discuss any aspect of the community of interest requests because it said the issue was part of an investigation by the Justice Department inspector general’s office into national security letters. An initial review in March by the inspector general found widespread violations in the F.B.I.’s use of the letters, but did not mention the use of community of interest data.

On Saturday, in response to the posting of the article on the Web site of The New York Times, Mike Kortan, a spokesman for the F.B.I., said “it is important to emphasize” that community of interest data is “no longer being used pending the development of an appropriate oversight and approval policy, was used infrequently, and was never used for e-mail communications.”

The scope of the demands for information could be seen in an August 2005 letter seeking the call records for particular phone numbers under suspicion. The letter closed by saying: “Additionally, please provide a community of interest for the telephone numbers in the attached list.”

The requests for such data showed up a dozen times, using nearly identical language, in records from one six-month period in 2005 obtained by a nonprofit advocacy group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that it brought against the government. The F.B.I. recently turned over 2,500 pages of documents to the group. The boilerplate language suggests the requests may have been used in many of more than 700 emergency or “exigent” national security letters. Earlier this year, the bureau banned the use of the exigent letters because they had never been authorized by law.

The reason for the suspension is unclear, but it appears to have been set off in part by the questions raised by the inspector general’s initial review into abuses in the use of national security letters. The official said the F.B.I. itself was examining the use of the community of interest requests to get a better understanding of how and when they were used, but he added that they appeared to have been used in a relatively small percentage of the tens of thousand of the records requests each year. “In an exigent circumstance, that’s information that may be relevant to an investigation,” the official said.

A federal judge in Manhattan last week struck down parts of the USA Patriot Act that had authorized the F.B.I.’s use of the national security letters, saying that some provisions violated the First Amendment and the constitutional separation of powers guarantee. In many cases, the target of a national security letter whose records are being sought is not necessarily the actual subject of a terrorism investigation and may not be suspected at all. Under the Patriot Act, the F.B.I. must assert only that the records gathered through the letter are considered relevant to a terrorism investigation.

Some legal analysts and privacy advocates suggested that the disclosure of the F.B.I.’s collection of community of interest records offered another example of the bureau exceeding the substantial powers already granted it by Congress.

“This whole concept of tracking someone’s community of interest is not part of any established F.B.I. authority,” said Marcia Hofmann, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which provided the records from its lawsuit to The New York Times. “It’s being defined by the F.B.I. And when it’s left up to the F.B.I. to decide what information is relevant to their investigations, they can vacuum up almost anything they want.”

Matt Blaze, a professor of computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania and a former researcher for AT&T, said the telecommunications companies could have easily provided the F.B.I. with the type of network analysis data it was seeking because they themselves had developed it over many years, often using sophisticated software like a program called Analyst’s Notebook.

“This sort of analysis of calling patterns and who the communities of interests are is the sort of things telephone companies are doing anyway because it’s central to their businesses for marketing or optimizing the network or detecting fraud,” said Professor Blaze, who has worked with the F.B.I. on technology issues.

Such “analysis is extremely powerful and very revealing because you get these linkages between people that wouldn’t be otherwise clear, sometimes even more important than the content itself” of phone calls and e-mail messages, he said. “But it’s also very invasive. There’s always going to be a certain amount of noise,” with data collected on people who have no real links to suspicious activity, he said.

Officials at other American intelligence agencies, like the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, have explored using link analysis to trace patterns of communications sometimes two, three or four people removed from the original targets, current and former intelligence officials said. But critics assert that the further the links are taken, the less valuable the information proves to be.

Some privacy advocates said they were troubled by what they saw as the F.B.I.’s over-reliance on technology at the expense of traditional investigative techniques that rely on clearer evidence of wrongdoing.

“Getting a computer to spit out a hundred names doesn’t have any meaning if you don’t know what you’re looking for,” said Michael German, a former F.B.I. agent who is now a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union. “If they’re telling the telephone company, ‘You do the investigation and tell us what you find,’ the relevance to the investigation is being determined by someone outside the F.B.I.”


Thats right, the FBI has now given itself yet another new power, to investigate persons who associate with the person they are investigating online. That means if you post to a forum, read a web blog, etc. - you now can be investigated. No more probable cause, if your visiting websites or forums, then obviously you must share the same views and ideals as the other people there, meaning your probably guilty of some crime. The FBI will be watching you as well now.

So if your reading this in any forum or blog I have posted to, it means the FBI now feel that your a valid target for investigation, and by now have done up a full dossier on you.

Welcome to the other side of the microscope.

...we have meetings every Wednesday. With punch and pie.

[KontanKarite]

Jokes on them. I abide the laws. In fact, most laws don't apply to me because I wouldn't morally break them anyway. If they want to spend all their time investigating me or anyone else who wouldn't hurt a fly, then that's on them. Too bad I don't know how to block shit like that.

Things are starting to remind me of 1984. But like everything, I'll wait to see what's on the other side of this thread.

[delicti]

Originally Posted by KontanKarite

Things are starting to remind me of 1984. But like everything, I'll wait to see what's on the other side of this thread.

I think what he's actually trying to say is that when he got kicked out of the US, they were on to something. If it happened now, he'd say they were full of shit.

I'm not sure how "link analysis" is any different from the regular investigative process, outside of having it automated. It's probably going to be struck down by a judge, or abandoned by the FBI eventually. Automation and investigation are pretty incompatible, in my experience.

[MaguMan]

I'd be more concerned if what Sternn said were true, but obviously it's not. Common sense dictates that, since all of this information comes from the phone companies, obviously they're not tracking online activity. First off, no phone company in the world has the resources or time in order to do that, and second off, if someone had a MySpace.com account, obviously the network of associated people would be ridiculous.

I mean, give me a fucking break. If that were possible, then the phone companies could just assume the role of prosecuting each and every individual that seeks out child pornography over the internet. That's if... it were even feasible for them to monitor the activity of each and every individual. They don't have the time or the jurisdiction. Best they can do is supply your IP address to law enforcement agencies for purposes of cross checking it with online traffic visiting those sites.

But anywho, "Communities of interest," doesn't refer to online communities. The articles never stated such and if the FBI were investigating anyone of reasonable intelligence, that person would not be using an ISP that's associated with any of the phone companies.

No one here is in danger of being associated with the idiocy of CptSternn. I imagine no one here talks to him on the phone, as such a conversation would be as fulfilling and interesting as talking to an automated telemarketing message. This refers to phone usage and if anything, it's a basis for looking into leads rather than opening formal investigations.

[Anguelon]

Oh great! Le Texte Integrale of Syrian Secret Services in Lebanon. All that phone record shit gets no one anywhere. Two years now almost, and their still investigating about Prime Minister Hariri's assasination. They've used cellphone records, remote-control blasting theory, etc, I think Melhis became an alcoholic after that.

It's like when the police here suspect one or two people in a group doing drugs but then catch the two people along with the group of friends who know nothing yet beating them till death to get a confession so that their job is easily done. I think Americans are copycating the Lebanese or even worse the Syrians.

[MaguMan]

Originally Posted by Anguelon

Two years now almost, and their still investigating about Prime Minister Hariri's assasination.

S'a wee bit ridiculous, isn't it? Well, at least the Syrian troops are out... "officially," anyways.

[Anguelon]

Originally Posted by MaguMan

S'a wee bit ridiculous, isn't it? Well, at least the Syrian troops are out... "officially," anyways.

Yeah, tell me about it. As for the Syrian troops, well their odors aren't officially out. Oh and by the way, the word ridiculous mostly describes Lebanese politics, Lebanese fashion and Lebanese society.

[MaguMan]

Ain't that the truth. :P